Do Come True... Director Mary Zimmerman, Used to Transforming Ancient Tales, Now Takes on Guys and Dolls— a Different Kind of Enchantment
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Do Come True... Director Mary Zimmerman, used to transforming ancient tales, now takes on Guys and Dolls— a different kind of enchantment. By Mark Dundas Wood rban missionary Sarah Brown from Guys and Dolls—the Chicago-based Zimmerman has repeatedly turned to storybook 1950 musical based on stories by Damon Runyon—believes worlds, often with “presto-change-o” plot points, throughout steadfastlyU that true love is out there, fated for her, and that her career. In 2012 she directed The White Snake, an adaptation she’ll recognize her white knight instantly when he arrives. “I’ll of an ancient Chinese legend, for OSF. Her most famous work, know when my love comes along . .” she sings. “I’ll know, as I run Metamorphoses, was a stage adaptation of Ovid’s myths. to his arms, that at last I’ve come home safe and sound.” Developed at Northwestern University and the Lookingglass Theatre Company, of which she is a longtime member, the play The sentiments of Frank Loesser’s song “I’ll opened on Broadway in 2002 and earned Know” are nearly interchangeable with Zimmerman a Tony Award for direction. those in ballads written for Walt Disney’s She also developed stage versions of “The Snow White (“Someday my prince will come Arabian Nights,” Homer’s “Odyssey” and— . .”) and Sleeping Beauty (“I know you! I more recently—Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle walked with you once upon a dream. .”). Book” stories (for Disney Theatricals). But that shouldn’t be surprising. Guys and Although she has directed opera and Dolls is in good company with a number of revamped Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, mid-20th-century American stage musicals Zimmerman has never directed a with a fairy-tale sensibility. My Fair Lady is classic American musical—until now. based on George Bernard Shaw’s take on Unsurprisingly, she’s begun the process by the myth of “Pygmalion and Galatea,” but examining the original Runyon stories used also calls to mind “Cinderella.” Funny Girl by writers Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows gives us the Ugly Duckling transformed to a for the show’s book. Guys and Dolls is Ziegfeld Follies swan. Once Upon a Mattress, customarily presented in a post-World War meanwhile, goes directly to Hans Christian II setting, but Zimmerman is rethinking Mary Zimmerman Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” for its that: “The stories on which Guys and Dolls is libretto. based were written and set squarely in the 1930s—the heyday of gangsters and ‘dolls.’ The OSF production will push more toward Gangsters with heart that era.” In an interview at OSF in June, Director Mary Zimmerman said she recognizes Guys and Dolls’ connection with the worlds of Music director Doug Peck is concocting an effervescent, early-jazz storytellers like Andersen. “For all its milieu of Damon Runyon orchestration of the Loesser score. Wrote Peck, in an email: “Many and the back-alley world of New York City, Guys and Dolls is, in the of the songs of Guys and Dolls have become jazz standards end, a sort of brilliant, complex fairy tale,” she said. “It’s a world in in their own right—“If I Were a Bell,” “I’ve Never Been In Love which the gangsters aren’t particularly dangerous, and the ‘doll’ Before,” “Luck Be a Lady,” “My Time of Day,” etc.—and it’s exciting Adelaide—the burlesque performer—wants nothing more than a to be able to acknowledge the double life these classic tunes house full of children and a white picket fence. A great deal of its have led when scoring them in the context of the show.” charm resides in how essentially sweet these rough-and-tumble characters and story turn out to be in the end.” Zimmerman emphasized that the original stories and the show both have a “defiantly exuberant” energy. Theatregoers need not The reformation of Guys and Dolls’ gamblers Sky Masterson worry about being enshrouded in Hooverville gloom. “You know, (Sarah’s love interest) and Nathan Detroit (Adelaide’s guy) is gangsters and showgirls do very well during the Depression,” she familiar territory for Zimmerman: “Radical transformation or said. “The spirit of the stories and the show is very, very high.” transfiguration is a big theme in a lot of what I’ve done. This is that in more human and realistic terms. There is radical transformation and transfiguration of these two characters, Nathan and Sky, away from their gambling ways.” 14 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival.